The second coffin is deeper into the space, boxed in by the first. He climbs up onto the first and feels the lid of the second. Two boxes have somehow ended up here. Dean doesn’t doubt it was the motion of the train, but it’s not difficult to imagine someone or something else rearranging things in here for reasons he knows nothing about.

Reason.

On his knees, the hats still over his hands, he lifts the second lid. He’s prepared this time, breathing only out his mouth, and he gets to work checking it immediately.

He feels legs. Fingers. Arms. This man is naked.

Dean’s hands move fast, too fast, and the hat slips from his left.

He yanks his arm back.

“Jesus,” he says.

He doesn’t want to reach back in for the hat. Doesn’t want to touch the dead body

(something else?)

bare-handed.

“She’s really gotten into your head, man,” he says.

But maybe what Malorie speaks is the truth. In a world without shared experiences, who knows what laws she’s discovered on her own?

He begins to close the lid. But he hasn’t felt the head yet.

He doesn’t know why this matters. But it does. As if, in the end, it’s the head that separates sanity from madness.

One hand on the lid, he reaches in with the other, his fingers covered in wool. He touches the tip of the nose first and imagines something other than a face, something that looks back up at him.

Something with fingers that can touch.

He moves quick, running his hand over the rest of the face.

Satisfied, or something like it, he pulls his arm out and lets the lid slam closed.

Then he hears what can only be commotion in the hall. Nobody hurrying this time. He heard voices. More than one. Possibly even somebody yelling.

Eyes closed, still anxious, Dean lowers himself from the first coffin and makes his way back to the door. He’s moving too fast, and he knocks another box to the ground, but this time doesn’t bend to retrieve it.

In the hall, the door closed behind him, he opens his eyes.

And sees a familiar face walking toward him.

“Gary,” he says. “Hi.”

Gary’s silver hair and gray stubble glisten under the car light, and he looks momentarily insane.

Then Gary smiles and wipes his hands on his sweater.

“Needed some air,” he says.

Dean, still shaken, nods. He likes Gary. Gary has ridden the train before. Numerous times. He always gets off at Indian River.

“Close to your stop,” Dean says. It’s supposed to be funny, as the train doesn’t actually stop for Indian River, but Gary will get off all the same.

“Yes,” Gary says, stopping a few feet away. “Can’t wait.”

“And Nathan?” Dean asks.

Gary thumbs toward the train’s back door.